Once a Soldier

by Mary Jo Putney

  “They were working on it, but there was still much to be done. I’m sure you heard about the collapse of the bridge of boats that caused the drowning of huge numbers of fugitives from French troops?”

  Her mouth twisted. “If I answer this, I must be allowed to use it for a future ‘worst experiences’ question. I didn’t just hear about that day of horrors. I was there.”

  “Good God, how did you come to be caught up in that?” Will exclaimed as he turned on the bench to stare at her, his shock visible even in the starlit darkness.

  “After Sofia’s mother died, she was sent to a convent school in Porto. She was miserable and begged to be allowed to come home,” Athena explained. “Because Uncle Carlos was worried about her and also about the threat from the French, he wrote and asked me to collect Sofia in Porto and bring her home, then stay on as her tutor and companion until she was of age.”

  “I gather you arrived in Porto shortly before the French attack?”

  Athena swallowed hard. “My timing was atrocious. When I arrived at the convent, I was invited to stay a few days to tell the students about my travels. Two days after I arrived, the French attacked. One of the devils broke into the convent, which had only a low wall around it. He was drunk and violent and he began shouting for the prettiest nun in the house, since he’d always wanted to have a nun. I . . . I got his rifle away from him and . . . shot him.” She swallowed hard.

  “It’s not easy to kill a man.” Will’s warm, strong hand closed over hers comfortingly. “Even if it’s necessary. The sisters were fortunate that you were there.”

  “They were gentle souls, so you’re right. I doubt any of them had ever shot a gun, much less a man.” She shivered at the memory. “The sounds of battle were drawing nearer and the house wasn’t secure, so the mother superior decided to evacuate to a sister convent across the river. It was larger and had high walls and would be much safer.”

  “Then you reached the bridge over the Douro and found that the Portuguese defenders had destroyed it, and desperate refugees had built a temporary bridge of boats across the river,” Will said soberly.

  “There was a huge crowd of people shoving to get onto the bridge. We circled around the girls and the nuns’ habits provided the group some consideration. When our turn came, we made our way very carefully onto the bridge. It was frightening to attempt, swaying and shaking from the river current and so many people trying to cross over. Three times I had to drag someone from the water. The advantage of long arms.” She drew a shuddering breath. “We had almost reached the southern bank when the boats began breaking apart underneath our feet.”

  She burrowed under Will’s arm, getting as close as she could. “It was horrible. I almost lost the littlest girl, Mariana. When I managed to grab her arm, I almost drowned myself because my soaked clothing was so heavy. Then a Portuguese man grabbed my hand and pulled us both ashore.”

  “You were dressed as a nun,” Will said softly. “And by heroic efforts were able to save most or all of those under your protection.”

  “All of us survived. I had a great deal of aid from the local men who helped haul us to shore.” She frowned as she realized what he’d said. “How did you know I was dressed as a nun?”

  “Because I was there,” Will said grimly. “I’m a good swimmer, so I dived into the river and started pulling people to safety, including you. It was bloody bedamned chaos, with screaming and gunshots from some French soldiers while other Frenchmen joined the rescue efforts.” He drew a deep breath. “I have a vague memory of helping a remarkably tall nun with a rifle out of the water. Then she gathered her charges and disappeared.”

  “You were there?” she gasped. She’d tried to forget that horrible day, but she remembered some of the men who had helped the girls and the nuns. “You were the one who rescued me and Mariana? I only got a glimpse of your face and you were badly in need of a shave—I never would have recognized you.”

  Though now that he’d said he was the man who’d saved her, she recognized that his broad shoulders and powerful build matched those of her rescuer. “I was so frantic to get us all away. I never even said a thank-you.” Her voice was shaking.

  “You looked half mad, so I didn’t expect thanks. You immediately started rounding up your girls. I wondered later if you were able to get everyone to safety.”

  She closed her eyes and calmed herself as she absorbed the amazing fact that Will had rescued her on the worst day of her life. “We did. When you helped me ashore with Mariana, another couple of men were collecting all the students around the sisters. One yelled for us to get away as quickly as we could. A group of French soldiers were charging toward us.” She winced, remembering. “One was bellowing out vile obscenities about what he liked to do to little girls.”

  “I heard,” Will said tersely. “Until someone shot him. I wasted no tears.”

  She nodded, swallowing hard so that she could continue speaking. “That’s when you and several other men moved between us and the French. Later I was surprised because none of your group were in uniform, but you acted like soldiers.”

  “As it turns out, at least two of us were soldiers, but more about that later. How did you manage to escape safely? I wondered if you’d succeeded, but there was no way to know.” His voice caught. “There were so many horrors that day.”

  She was remembering too many of those horrors, yet talking to Will, who had been there, was strangely healing. “We ran as fast as we could away from the river. I was holding Mariana because she was too small to get far on her own, and she was shrieking in my ear and almost strangling me.”

  “How far did you have to travel before you were safe?”

  “We didn’t get far. Little girls and elderly nuns are not swift of foot, and there were only a handful of young nuns and me to help the others.” She shuddered again. “A French officer appeared in front of us and I thought we were doomed, but he shouted in bad Spanish that we should come to the church just down the street. He had several men with him and they escorted us through the mob to the church. In English, the name would be Our Lady of Perpetual Salvation.”

  Will laughed, his voice a deep rumble in his chest. “How very appropriate.”

  Athena smiled a little. “When we were inside, the mother superior and several of the other nuns dropped to their knees in front of a statue of the Blessed Mother and prayed their thanks. The French officer was collecting other women and children in the church, and he had some of his men outside as guards. We spent the night there. In the morning when it was quiet, he detailed several men to escort us to the convent we’d been heading for the previous day. It was a long walk, but his men helped carry the littlest girls.”

  “A reminder that there are good men everywhere,” Will said. “I’ve met Frenchmen I’d trust much further than some of the Englishmen I know.”

  She nodded agreement. “After a couple of days at the convent while we recovered, the mother superior found several reliable men who were willing to take me, Sofia, and Maria Mercedes da Silva to San Gabriel without being paid until we reached here safely.”

  “Good of them to do it without money in advance.”

  At that, Athena actually laughed. “Sofia showed them her mother’s cross, which she was wearing under her school uniform. It’s gold and set with jewels, very impressive. She said that was proof of her good faith, but if they tried to take it from her by force before we were safe in the Castelo Blanco, her dead mother would curse them all to hell. Our escorts treated us very, very well. Though to be fair, they might have done so even without the threat.”

  Will chuckled. “Your princess is a very resourceful young lady.”

  “She is a true royal Alcantara.” Athena exhaled roughly. “It was such a relief to reach here safely. I haven’t set foot outside of San Gabriel since.” She bent for the bottle of wine and silently offered to refresh Will’s drink.

  He accepted and clinked his tumbler against hers. “To survival against the odds!�
��

  “Amen.” She took a swallow rather than a sip, grateful for the burn of the brandy that fortified the wine. “What about you? How did you manage to escape?”

  “I didn’t manage that,” he said dryly. “There was a hand-to-hand battle after you left. Fugitives, French troops, Portuguese soldiers, civilians who were trying to help. Luckily, not a lot of bullets and casualties, but I got bashed on the head and woke up that night locked in a cellar with a firing squad scheduled for dawn.”

  Athena’s heart clutched, even though he’d obviously survived. “How did you escape execution?”

  “I was locked in with four other men who’d been part of the attempts to block the French advance. A French colonel decided all five of us were English spies, so he imprisoned us in the cellar of the house he’d commandeered as his headquarters and ordered us shot. A nice, simple solution from his point of view.”

  “Were you a spy?” she asked. “You were wearing Portuguese dress.”

  “‘Spy’ is such a strong word,” Will said mildly. “I considered myself an observer. Since I spoke Portuguese and had visited my friend Ballard in Porto, my commanding officer asked me to go into the city and find out what the situation was. Like you, I had atrocious timing.”

  “What about the others? Were they English spies?”

  “I have no idea,” Will said reflectively. “Four of us admitted to being British. One was a fellow I’d known at school. The fifth, Duval, said he was a French royalist, but it turns out he’s half English and half French, and he’s the British colonel who sent me to San Gabriel. He was surely spying, but I don’t know what the others were doing in Porto.”

  Athena hesitated before succumbing to curiosity. “What does it feel like to know that you’ll be shot in a few hours?”

  “That’s an interesting question.” Will frowned. “Going into battle or riding in ambush country, you know you might die in an instant, or perhaps be mortally wounded and die in agony. Fear is a constant, quiet drumbeat in the back of one’s head. But there is something much uglier about the cold-blooded deliberation of an execution. Feeling the clock ticking, wondering how well one will face the end, how long it will take to die . . .” He shook his head. “An interesting experience, but not one I want to repeat.”

  She slipped her free arm around his waist. “It must have been a long night.”

  “It was. We shared what alcohol was in the cellar and talked fancifully about how we would redeem past sins if we survived, which none of us expected to do.”

  “Are your sins that great?” she asked, surprised.

  “Not compared to some, I suppose,” he said slowly. “But there were enough failures of duty, things I should have done, people I should have treated better, to weigh on my soul.”

  She understood such small but never forgotten past sins. “A strange night indeed. How did you escape the firing squad? Did the French colonel change his mind?”

  “I noticed a Masonic symbol carved into a stone behind a set of shelves. It’s not unknown for Masons to build escape tunnels from their homes, so we investigated and found that behind the stone was a shaft angling up and out. It was a tight fit, but we all managed to get out before dawn.”

  “And went your separate ways after sharing a shattering experience. Were you glad to see each other’s backs?”

  “Oddly enough, no,” Will replied. “The wicked little secret of soldiering is that it creates intense bonds among those who share the experiences. Facing danger together, us against the enemy, brings a powerful closeness. We stole horses and rode east away from Porto and Gaia, but when the time came to split up, we found ourselves reluctant to say good-bye.” He shook his head. “It was one of the stranger episodes in my life, but not one I want to forget. The others felt the same.”

  “At least you met Duval, even if you never see any of the others again.”

  “Perhaps now that the war is over, we’ll have a Rogues Reunion and see if we’ve been living up to our vows to redeem ourselves,” Will said with a laugh. “We agreed to use Hatchard’s bookstore in London as a postbox. The manager keeps letters for us. When I was in London because of my brother’s alleged death, I stopped by and found letters from two of the other men. They were rather cagey about what they’re doing now, but at least they were still alive in the not-too-distant past.”

  “Did you add a letter?”

  “I did. I suspect I was the least devious of the group, so there was no reason not to mention that I was an officer in the Fifty-second. Perhaps that’s how Duval found me.”

  “Returning to normal life after sharing such danger and closeness will be difficult,” Athena observed. “Is that why you want to develop greater closeness with me, a chance-met female whose principal recommendation is to be tall enough for you?”

  “You may very well be right about the closeness,” he said thoughtfully. “But your height is far from your only appealing quality.” He brushed a kiss on her temple and murmured mischievously, “It’s more in the nature of a delightful bonus.”

  Chapter 13

  In keeping with his resolve to move slowly, Will made sure that his kiss was light and undemanding. He wasn’t prepared for Athena to turn her face up so that their lips met. The kiss began as friendly recognition of all they had shared that night, but the sweet intimacy of her soft mouth jolted fire through his veins.

  The possessive male part of him wanted to claim her as his mate, for surely they were meant to be together. They had first met under savage circumstances, a bond that had gone unrecognized till tonight, but which could not now be ignored.

  The saner part of him realized that a strong, independent woman needed to be wooed and won, not claimed like a conquered city. Yet it was impossible to be sane when she slid her arms around him and responded with the buried passion he’d sensed was a vital part of her.

  He loved the way she filled his embrace, woman-soft, woman-strong, and woman-scented. When she opened her lips, their tongues touched, a feather-light caress that turned mind-meltingly erotic. Illicit fire in a cool, sweet night. She tasted like fine wine and brandy and tantalizing sensuality.

  A joyous madness bubbled through his veins and his breath quickened as he whispered, “Athena, goddess. . .” Unable to resist the rose petal softness of her fair skin, his lips moved hungrily across her cheek to the delicious whorls of her ear.

  She gasped, her fingertips digging into his back before she reclaimed his mouth with feverish urgency. He wasn’t sure she even realized when she swung a leg over his legs and slid onto his lap, her legs bracketing his.

  Dizzily he rocked against her as their lips and loins pressed together, heat to heat. His hands under the shawl roamed over the supple curves of her back and hips. In a remote corner of his mind, he realized that he should stop this now, but his better judgment had fled, leaving only hot, mad craving.

  His right hand slid down the back of her thigh into the skirts tangled around her knee. When he pushed the folds of fabric away, his palm found the smooth flesh on the back of her knee. His hand began caressing higher....

  No! He froze, realizing how close he was to losing control entirely. “This is not a good idea,” he said in a choked voice.

  Needing to get away from her intoxicating self, he caught Athena’s waist with both hands and swung her onto the bench. Then he lurched to his feet and escaped from the gazebo. A breeze in his face cleared his wits as he stalked across the flat roof of the tower. He was here to help San Gabriel and that meant working with Athena. But how the devil would they face each other in the morning after such reckless intimacy?

  Knowing there was no other choice, he swung around to face her. She stood in the doorway of the gazebo, her shawl gripped tightly around her and hair tumbling loose over her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” he said raggedly. “I didn’t mean that to happen. We’re still working on friendship, and I know you don’t want to go further.”

  Though her tall figure was taut and h
er eyes were great dark pools of shadow, her voice was wryly amused when she said, “I must admit that for a few minutes there, I did want to go further. You’re rather dangerously attractive, you know.”

  He blinked. “That is not a comment I’ve ever heard before.”

  “Then you’ve spent too many years in the masculine environs of the army. If you moved in more normal society, you would find yourself being hunted.”

  “I’m quite sure you’re the only woman in the world who would think that, but I’m flattered.” His smile faded. “Delightful as it is to kiss you, I know that premature passion might lead to disaster. I don’t want to risk driving you away and destroying the friendship we’re developing.”

  Arms still crossed under her shawl, she leaned against one of the narrow pillars that framed the entrance to the gazebo and regarded him thoughtfully. “I’ve never met a man who values friendship with women as much as you do.” Her voice turned dry. “Most males seem far more interested in bedding than in being friends.”

  Her perception was part of what drew him to her, even when it was uncomfortable. He began pacing across the roof with tight steps as he chose his words. “I do value friendship greatly. I was a very lonely child until my brother, Damian, came to Hayden Hall. My father didn’t understand how much I needed a companion, which was why I would not allow my brother to be sent away.”

  “Did your father ever take the time to know your brother?”

  Will’s lips tightened. “No. He accepted that he was responsible for Mac and paid school fees and living expenses, and later he bought Mac a commission. But he could barely stand to be in the same room with him. Mac’s existence was a reminder of my father’s less-than-respectable behavior.”

  “It sounds as if your father was something of a hypocrite,” she observed.

  “He was,” Will agreed. “Apart from Mac, my family wasn’t terribly satisfactory, which is why friendships have been so important to me. The friendships formed at my school have become so deep and lasting because we were all misfits of one sort or another. But we learned we could trust each other. That created lasting bonds.”